John Austin (now at Northwestern) and I taught advanced legal research at
Northern Illinois University. Our class was limited to 25; offered only
in the spring semester; and was worth 1 credit, graded. The single biggest
complaint we received was the amount of work we required for 1 credit. We
always had a waiting list for the class, and it was very popular with
students. We emphasized research skills necessary for practicing lawyers,
and focused on practice oriented materials that our students were likely
to need as law clerks and lawyers.
We used a lecture/workshop format with a weekly lecture on the topic and a
hands-on workshop limited to 10 students per workshop. It was labor
intensive for us, but very successful as a learning tool.
Our final exam was given as an individual, one on one oral exam with three
parts: a 20 minutes LEXIS segment, a 20 minute WESTLAW segment, and a 40
minute library research segment. For the on-line segments, we gave the
student a list of research questions to be done on-line and observed how
they answered the questions. We graded on cost-efficient searching, speed
and accuracy of answers. The students had to quit, finished or not, at
the end of 20 minutes. The library segment consisted of 8 mini-research
problems, relating to issues covered in class. The students were given 40
minutes to walk one of us through the process of answering as many of
these questions as they could in 40 minutes. They were graded on
accuracy. If we were unsure that they knew what they were doing, we asked
them why they were doing a certain thing. Every year when we did these
finals I wanted to scream, but there were no papers to grade, and the
students REALLY studied. They got to be pretty good. (We also gave
individual oral exams in basic legal research, but they weren't as long or
labor intensive.)
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Rebecca S. Trammell Internet: rebeccat@unllib.unl.edu
Associate Director Bitnet:rebeccat%unllib@unlvax1.bitnet
University of Nebraska Lincoln Office: (402) 472-8302
Schmid Law Library Fax: (402) 472-5185
Lincoln, NE 68503-0902
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